Nincompoopery

Wednesday, December 13, 2017

New York Senator Kristen Gillibrand has been out spoken proponent of challenging men who assault women. See was the first Senator to call for John Conyers to resign and for Al Franken to resign (both Democrats, as is Senator Gillibrand.

The other day she called on the President to step down or to face up to the charges against him. Instead he tweeted that she has begging him for donations and would do "anything" for them.

USA Today - as centrist as you can be - did not appreciate it...(link)

As for the President. His Sarah Gobbels-Sanders said that only someone who's mind is in the gutter would think there was anything to the comment. This about her boss who is on tape about barging backstage during pageants to ogle the girls and bragged about kissing women right away and bragged about being able to "...do anything, grab them by the pussy..." because he is famous.

Saturday, December 09, 2017

I loved it. Armie was good, but the breakout was Timothee Chalamet. He was stunning. They are both straight guys, but energy was believeable. A fair amount of kissing, but not sex shown (so safe for your mom).

Well, I lived in California and voted after school and work. By the time I got to the polls - at 5:45 PM PDT, President Carter had already conceded to Ronald Reagan. Nimrod. So my vote wasn't wasted so much as useless before I voted. So I voted my heart.

Why vote at all, you ask. Well, there were down ballot races that were important - and probably changed when Carter conceded too early.

Back to John. John Anderson was what was, at that time, a liberal Republican. We don't have those anymore. He was socially liberal / libertarian, but financial conservative. California had a shit-load of those until Pete Wilson screwed the pooch with the anti-Hispanic propositions.

Oddly, I was around when the amendment happened to drop the voting age to 18 (if they were old enough to fight in Vietnam, they were old enough to vote - went the saying). And, even odder, it didn't effect me at all. My first presidential election was when I turned 21. The previous one was when I was 17.

I also remember my first vote period. It was in the 1980 Democratic primary. I selected 5 electors pledged to Jessie Jackson and 3 electors pledged to Jimmy Carter. An elector system that was only used once in California.

Thursday, December 07, 2017

The twin process of climate change and man encroaching on natural habitats is creating real time changes that people are studying.

In this case, it is the synergy rising between Elk and Magpies. In parts of Alberta (Canada), Elk have taken to staying close to towns and not migrating. Partially due to climate change and partially due to humans settling in areas that elk live in and partially due to wolves that are moving into the territory.

What researchers have found is that Elk in town are braver. "Shy" elk, those that don't like people, still migrate.

But now migrating "shy" elk, at the end of a day, will lay down and "brave" magpies will approach them. The magpies groom the elk by eating ticks that attack the elk. The rise in ticks is due to climate change.

Right now it is the "shy" elk that migrate and need groomers and the "brave" magpies that started approaching them to groom them.

In 50 or 100 years, we may see a species synergy like the honey badger and the bee-catcher in Africa. We are seeing it happen in front of our eyes. Which is a bit magical, even though it is driven by human forced needs.

President Trump's statement on Jerusalem is neither shocking nor groundbreaking. The movement of the embassy has been talking point of his backers for a long time.

Sheldon Anderson, a prominent Jewish backer - who has donated billions to various Republicans for years AND who started a newspaper in Israel - has been pushing for this for a long time. For him, it serves as marker that the United States supports Israel over the Palestinians.

For many on the Evangelical right, it serves as the start of the time Second Coming. Sure it will kill hundreds of millions in the middle east, but it saves them. Yay.

For some people in America, with a persistent but low level of anti-Muslim bias, it is a way to poke the Muslim world with very little downside.

For most Americans it is a non-issue. Given everything else going on in the country, this is relatively unimportant to us as an issue.

For the "international community", it makes the US less able to be an independent arbiter of peace in the Middle East. But most foreign actors didn't ever think we independent arbiters before. For some international observers, it makes us subservient to Israel policies - but Americans don't care. We believe about foreigners in general "they hate us anyway - no matter what we do".

We are breaching international norms, and our own stated morality - but welcome to Donald Trump's America kids. Breaching our own morality is what we do now.

Monday, December 04, 2017

Let us say that you are working. Your co-worker's husbands got medical and dental insurance via marriage. But you were married to a Jewish Man and he couldn't get those benefits because he was Jewish. Or you were married to a Black man and he couldn't get those benefits because he was black.

Or you were legally married to a man who was the same sex as you, and he wasn't given medical or dental because your are both men or women.

Of those three ideas, guess which one is legal in Texas.

And guess which one the Supreme Court just upheld as legal in the United States. Yep, it is totally legal to give different rights (and always fewer) to people married to same-sex partners as opposed to opposite sex partners. Supreme Court says so...